Watched again now, Smith’s performance is weirdly subdued, as if all the emphasis is really on the established comic talent Lawrence, and Smith is his straight man.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 22, 2025

... the pairing of Martin Lawrence and Will Smith generates a winning comic chemistry.

| Apr 9, 2019

Haven't we seen this all before? Four or five dozen times?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 29, 2019

You may rest assured that whenever a glass object hoves into view, it will be shattered in slo-mo by the end of the scene.

| Mar 29, 2019

Entertainment of the gratingly commercial, teeth-rattling variety is provided in Bad Boys.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 29, 2019

These are two high-energy, likable performers, and yet long passages unwind in which they are terribly boring because they are working without much of a script.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 29, 2019

A frantically slick and thoroughly enjoyable extravaganza.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 13, 2011

The cops never seem to know what they're doing, but then neither do the filmmakers, though I can't imagine that casual audiences will care since there are plenty of big explosions at the end to reward them.

| Feb 5, 2010

Even when it's not particularly funny, their interplay is engaging, and their lively, raucous personalities keep the proceedings punchy and watchable for the slightly overlong running time.

| Mar 26, 2009

Unfortunately, the movie is a couple of rewrites short of 'developed', and the thriller configurations are stale.

| Jan 26, 2006

This film isn't aiming for high-toned drama, just high-energy entertainment, which is what it delivers.

| May 20, 2003

It's all special-effects noise and nonsense.

| May 12, 2001

Given how much good Bad Boys is going to do for Martin Lawrence's feature career, it's a pity the film couldn't do any more for itself.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 13, 2001

Plays less like the gritty action-comedy picture it aspires to be and more like a disingenuous 126 minutes of slick Hollywood inanities, a cobbled-together series of flashy explosions and none-too-witty banter.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

Bad Boys is relentless formulaic fodder for the explosion-starved; it's loud, shallow, sexist and a complete waste of time.

| Jan 1, 2000

Nice to look at, the film's glum Miami Vice plot is subverted by the jiggy flavour of a film that's nothing more than an excuse for Martin Lawrence and Will Smith to play cops and robbers for two hours.

| Original Score: 35/100 | Jan 1, 2000

A good half-hour's worth of nonsense in the middle keeps Bad Boys from being little better than a break- even proposition.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Even by the low-low standards of cheap action flicks, this one's bad, boys.

| Jan 1, 2000

This movie is so good-looking it deserves a decent screenplay, instead of one more lope down memory lane.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Of course, the Simpson-Bruckheimer approach may still work at the box office (the only place it ever really mattered, anyway). By now, though, I'd like to think most moviegoers have had a permanent overdose.

| Original Score: C- | May 19, 1995